Attacker of victims' rights icon is back in jail

Updated 10:53 pm, Friday, January 27, 2012

William David Kelley was released from a Texas prison in 2010 after serving his entire 20-year sentence for attempted kidnapping.

William David Kelley was released from a Texas prison in 2010 after serving his entire 20-year sentence for attempted kidnapping.

Photo: TDCJ

Attacker of victims' rights icon is back in jail

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An ex-convict from Houston, who attacked a woman who became a nationally known victims-rights advocate and was killed aboard TWA Flight 800, is back behind bars for allegedly failing to register as a sex offender.

William David Kelley was released from a Texas prison in 2010 after serving his entire 20-year sentence for attempted kidnapping.

He had given his address as a motel on the North Freeway but was no longer living there when officers checked on him, Deputy U.S. Marshal Alfredo Perez said Friday.

She decided to fight back by founding the group Justice For All after Kelley was not only up for release after two years, but was suing for psychological damage from his arrest.

"She said, 'I am not going to take this anymore' and came out blazing," said Andy Kahan, who was her friend and is a victims' rights advocate for the city of Houston.

"William David Kelley was the catalyst for spurring on one of the biggest victims' rights advocacy organizations this state has ever seen," he said.

Lychner drew widespread attention when she protested a possible reprieve for death row inmate Gary Graham, at a time when celebrities backed his cause. She later started a campaign to raise money for the voluntary castration of a proposed child molester, but no doctor would do it.

Lychner spoke to Texas legislators about toughening the laws on releasing violent offenders, wrote letters to parole boards, and was a regular in Harris County courts, where she comforted victims.

She and her two daughters, Shannon, 10, and Katie, 8, were killed in 1996 when Fight 800 exploded over the Atlantic Ocean after leaving New York. They were bound for Paris.

The Pam Lychner State Jail is named for her as was the Pam Lychner Sexual Offender Tracking and Identification Act of 1996, which established a national sex-offender registry.